Abstract:

An examination of English travelogues and anti-travel rhetoric from the end of the eighteenth century reveals a historical moment characterized by anxieties about sex, class, and the state of the nation. In response to these concerns, English
women were relegated to the household and men claimed exclusive control of the public sphere. As moral virtue and the nuclear family unit became increasingly important elements of English identity, the practice of travel became anathema to a growing national agenda. Women who disengaged from the domestic sphere and
elected to travel on the continent were seen as unpatriotic and antithetical to the new national project. Using widely read behavioral manuals geared towards women and the diaries of three aristocratic women traveling abroad during the last two decades of the century, this thesis explores the ways in which the combined acts of
travel and writing allowed women to separate from the domestic sphere and
establish historical agency in the face of oppressive social forces. The primary sources illustrate that nationalist rivalry, gender anxiety, and threats produced by unstable social categories resulted in a battle for the control of women's bodies, prompting many women to pursue alternative avenues of self-expression and define new modes of subjectivity.